Australian Aboriginal Quotes

“To understand the Dreamtime, you must understand that we do not own the land. The land is our mother and she owns and nurtures us.”
― Lance Morcan, White Spirit

“The Australian Aboriginal cave paintings, from this period, are the first hints of religion that humans have as proof of religious behaviour. The caves in which the paintings are found date to 50,000 years ago through forensic geology and carbon dating. Most of the images found in their religious stories and ceremonies are depicted in these caves. We also have confirmation from the aborigines themselves that these images are their religious images. These paintings also are likely to be significant evidence for linking the use of Amanita Muscaria to its use 50,000 years ago. This is because 50,000 years ago was when humanity entered Australia and also because Amanita Muscaria produces religious like experiences.”
― Leviak B. Kelly, Religion: The Ultimate STD: Living a Spiritual Life without Dogmatics or Cultural Destruction

“But the Australians, what do the Australians do? How do they structure their landscape? For a start they postulate a primal builder, whose work they presume only to interpret: the mythical animal who was active in the “dreamtime,” that is, a primal era, beyond verification, as the name indicates. A time of sleep. The visible landscape is an effect of causes that are to be found in the dreamtime. For example, the snake that dragged itself over this plain creating these undulations, etc., etc. These.. curious Aborigines make sure their eyes are closed while events take place, which allows them to see places as records of events. But what they see is a kind of dream, and they wake into a reverie, since the real story (the snake, not the hills) happened while they were asleep.”
― César Aira, Ghosts

“The problem is that after two centuries of conflict about just who was wanted in the Australian nation the term 'Australia' both includes and excludes. There are still people for whom 'Australian' means predominatly Anglo-Celtic white people whose parents were born here before 'New Australians' came as migrants after the Second World War. A common alternative to 'white people' (who from an Aboriginal perspective might be more genially called 'whitefellas') is 'Europeans'. This makes an incongruous appeal to history. Politically the colonisers were British, but they includes people of many nationalities. It's an odd usage, as when you see a sign in a national park telling you 'Europeans' brought the invasive weeds and pests. They brought the sign and the concept of a park too, and 'they', in a complex sense, are 'us'.”
― Nicholas Jose

“When I take people out into the land I say: 'Let's watch the land talk to us.' And you'll see some jaws drop. But that's what it's doin' - it's talking to us without a voice.
Our land does that all the time; our water does that, our wind. Grandmother Moon, Grandfather Sun do it all the time. They show us things, what's happening. They are talking to us constantly. And what do we do? We ignore them; we ignore what the Mother, the land is telling us.”
― Max Dulumunmun Harrison

“And in the end, we are all just stories”
― Linda Dowling

“Some say the idea that the world's trajectory is driven by conquest followed by innovation and intensification is satisfying to the Western mind because of our psychological dependence on our imperialist history. But if we give consideration to the idea that change can be generated by the spirit, and through that by political action, the stability of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures might be more readily explained.”
― Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu

“Barron Field, Judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court, endorsed Professor Blumenbach's 'most philosophic division of the varieties of the human species' into the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malayan and American races. However, Field disputed the German anatomist's classification of the Australians with the Malayan race, claiming instead that the 'skull, the genius, the habits, of the Australians appear to me, as far as I have been able to investigate the subject, to have, in all of them, the degenerate Ethiopian character'. The revised classification was of considerable importance, for according to Blumenbach's theory the Ethiopian was a more degenerate type than the Malayan. Going one step further, Field bluntly asserted that 'the Australian will never be civilized'. He was convinced that there was something inherent in the Aboriginal constitution that predisposed them to the life of the 'hunter and fisher'. Although the nature of this innate quality was not clearly explained, he did allude to the Aboriginals' lack of certain mental qualities necessary for the attainment of civilisation: 'They have quick conceptions, and ready powers of imitation; but they have no reflection, judgement or foresight”
― Russell McGregor